EP Patent No. 2 060 534 discloses a method of fabricating a silicon-metal composite micromechanical component, obtained from photolithography using photosensitive resins, silicon etching and galvanic growth. However, this method is complex to implement for metal parts over several levels and final coating steps have to be provided to improve the tribological properties of silicon.
Moreover, a method of this type is not suitable for micromechanical components with a high slenderness ratio where a material such as nickel-phosphorus with, for example 12% phosphorus, tends to peel off. The galvanic depositions of this type of component delaminate because of inner stresses in the deposited nickel-phosphorus.